Status of Women Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2017

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

I would be really interested in that.

I'm honoured to represent the riding of New Brunswick Southwest. We have a high concentration, in the community I live in, of people with Ph.D.s and people who have come from different areas. But certainly outside of that, in the rural areas, it is challenging. There isn't the same level of access to education. Within the riding itself, there's one college and there is one private non-denominational faith-based university. The universities are in what we would call the larger cities in New Brunswick, but there isn't the transportation to get there as well. We see that certainly there is a wage gap within the rural areas, because there isn't the same access to some of the higher-level jobs and there's also the issue regarding transportation.

The other question I had for you, Mr. Heisz, was around how the calculation of the gender wage gap is used. Is there a standardized measure that's being used for measuring wage gap that is across departments?

[Andrew Heisz]

I'm not aware of a standardized measure.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Okay.

Ms. Akman?

[Justine Akman]

We are exceedingly careful to explain which number we're using and how it's been calculated, because it is calculated very differently depending on what you're looking at. Even in my speaking points today I tried to be careful to make sure it was clear what we were speaking about.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

I did notice that. Thank you.

In our previous study, which was looking at violence against women and young girls, certainly the issue or the challenge regarding evidence and data was a common theme we heard, as was how the data was collected, because there wasn't that same level of consistency. The stories in some cases were anecdotal, which is certainly a case for research. The work that you are doing here is certainly very valuable, because it's evidence-based research that we can use in terms of implementing policy.

Have you come across any research, or have done your own research, in terms of the importance of women being involved in occupations that are unionized? Does that increase the wages or have more gender equality in terms of wages?

[Andrew Heisz]

I can speak to that. One factor that's important to consider, when considering occupation and the gender wage gap, is the high proportion of women in public occupations, government sector occupations. Of course, these occupations are also mostly unionized. There are studies on the gender wage gap that explain the impact of unionization on the gender wage gap, and I believe it is an important factor.

It would probably be prudent, rather than saying how much more important I think it is, to point you to the research.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That was a good thing to do. You're out of time.

I'll now go to my colleague Ms. Harder.

You have seven minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

All right.

Thank you so much for being here and for presenting to us.

First, to Andrew, one of the things that's highlighted in the deck is just the difference in terms of occupations. We enter different occupations from men, right? Women are hired within full-time work at different rates than men are. Is this because women are actually being turned away? When we look at the number of men and the number of women who are applying for the same job, is it that men are being chosen over women, or is it that women just simply aren't applying for the same jobs men are applying for?

[Andrew Heisz]

At Statistics Canada we're very careful to try to present what we call the “stylized facts”, the statistical results. We do, of course, also do research on the gender wage gap, which tries to get at some of the more causal factors involved. It's notoriously difficult to get at the causal factors, basically because we simply don't know everything about the pathways women are taking to get to the point where they are earning, and earning less than men.

We do know, for example, that women are more likely to work part-time. We know they're more likely, when they do work part-time, to state that one of the reasons for working part-time is choice or family responsibilities.

There are ways that one can de-compose the gender wage gap into components like that. Certainly choice must play a role, but also, as I mentioned in my speaking points, there are norms in society, and the ways that women and girls are steered towards different occupations may also play a role.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Right.

It would appear to me then that the most important factor here is protecting a woman's choice. Should our goal at the end of the day be to have 50% and 50% in every single field across the spectrum, or should it be to protect a woman's choice?

[Justine Akman]

We do have data. About 70% of part-time employment has consistently been by women, since data began being collected in 1997. While there are many reasons for working part-time, and sometimes the reason is choice, we do know that 37.8% of women working part-time indicated that they do so involuntarily. So, if there were more supports by private sector, public sector, and other employees, then they would prefer to work full-time. The main reason, again, as my colleague Andrew said, is often care responsibilities at home.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Andrew, you also said that the wage gap is narrowing. I wonder if you can comment on this further.

[Andrew Heisz]

Again, there's a bit of research around why the wage gap is narrowing. I think the narrowing of the wage gap is consistent with other socio-economic changes that are associated with women's participation in the labour market. Rising participation in the labour market and rising educational attainment by women would be important factors to consider when considering the narrowing gap.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

One of the things that you state in the deck here is that women actually complete post-secondary education at a greater degree or greater level than men do, so how did we arrive at that place?

I think that's very positive. Clearly, women are making their way in the world and doing very well for themselves. So, how did we get there?

[Andrew Heisz]

Again, it's a matter of changes in society and in the way people are entering post-secondary education. Speaking to the statistics, I can say that what you say is correct, that more women than men are now graduating from university. However, it's much more difficult to say why that is.

[Justine Akman]

Can I add to that?

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

You can.

[Justine Akman]

The wage gap at one point, when women were just entering the labour force, did decrease significantly. But now it's sort of stubbornly staying at approximately the same rate, depending on how you calculate it, whether it's full-time, part-time, the two combined, etc. It is a harder thing to move at this point, but because it's somewhere around the 30% rate, there's still a concerted effort by governments at all levels to try to address the wage gap.

The reasons that explain the wage gap—and there are a number of them, and not a one-solution-fits-all kind of thing—are caregiving, labour-market segmentation, continuing bias and discrimination in the workplace, and women's overrepresentation in part-time work.

To actually address the wage gap at this point would take a number of different kinds of initiatives. I would also add that it's much worse for some women. It's less for women of a certain education level, but if you actually go deeper, it's much worse for some women.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Andrew, when we look at the difference in earnings for women, if we compare a full-time worker to another full-time worker, the average earning for women is less. I guess I'm wondering if we are comparing apples to apples.

Are we comparing the same job description? For a man and a woman with the same job description, is the woman making less? Is that what the statistics are showing us?

[Andrew Heisz]

The statistics I presented here are a little bit less processed than what you're describing. They compare only the full-time wage of women and the full-time wage of men, and they don't control for differences in occupation or differences in other background characteristics.

There is research that does that kind of comparison. To the best of my memory, when you control for all of those factors, the wage gap becomes 92¢ on the dollar rather than the 88¢ that we have here. So some of the wage gap can be explained by what we would call “observables”, but there remains a part that's unexplained.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We'll go to Ms. Malcolmson for seven minutes.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, witnesses. You've set us up with some really good material that's going to be very helpful for our study. I appreciate your diving into the intention of our study, which is women's economic insecurity.

To the Status of Women witnesses, I note your condensation of some of the sad stories on the pay gap. Canada has the eighth-largest pay gap among OECD countries and that gap is between 26% and 32%, depending on whether it's part-time or full-time work. Given that, I'd like to know why Status of Women Canada didn't encourage the government to enact, and ensure that the government enacted, pay equity legislation. Given that the legislation was mostly written in 2014, why not do it right away instead of allowing the government to delay pay equity legislation until 2018?

[Justine Akman]

As I believe the committee is aware, the government has committed to coming back with a proposal in 2018 on pay equity. Status of Women has been part of the analysis related to that file, including ensuring that people understand the difference between the wage gap and pay equity. They're two very different concepts. Our focus is obviously on both issues.